Review of Mrs. K’s Deco Pastries – Customized Homemade Character Buns

February 25, 2015

My parents celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary last February 21, 2015, Saturday. We hit up south of Metro Manila and had dinner at The Nest in Vivere Hotel in Alabang. It was my second time to visit the place, and again, I was awed by its elegance and romantic vibe. This restaurant at the 31st floor is really top notch! On the way, we picked up our “special gift” for our parents at the agreed meetup location with the vendor—Cash and Carry Mall in Filmore Street, Makati.

This post is about a review of that “special gift.” As we wanted to surprise our parents, we did not show them what it is until we arrived at the hotel. 😆 Haha. Well…suspense, suspense!

If you follow me on Instagram, you would have already known about it. Click this link to view the picture. 🙂 Here’s also a quick preview:

Mrs. K can only be contacted via SMS, Viber, and WeChat. Strictly no calls are entertained, as revealed in her Instagram account. My sister used Viber and waited a while for a response. After a week, we finally got a reply on details on how to order, what we can request for, what the cost will be for a box of six different deco buns with different fillings, and where and when to meet up.

With the delay in response, I thought that Mrs. K should further improve its reachability and quality of customer interactions to increase customer satisfaction in the long term.

We booked our order three weeks in advance to make sure that nothing conflicts, we secure the deal 100%, and all proper arrangements will be made. The meetup time was supposedly 10AM, but because of some reason provided by Mrs. K, it was moved to 5PM.

At exactly 5PM, we were so ready to receive the package and waited in the car at the meetup place. After 15 minutes, there was no sign of Mrs. K’s Deco Pastries. I knew that making a call is a no-no, but I decided to dial the number to follow up. We were told to wait for another five minutes. Five minutes lapsed and no one showed up. I made another phone call and was asked to wait for an extended period of time. Was I being impatient? No, I’d like to think that I was just excited. 😐

After consecutive four calls, the delivery guy parked his car across us and handed the box over. We had a quick peek to check how the result looked like. Oh, thank God our waiting has paid off!

Food: ★★★★★

The deco buns we ordered were not that easy to make since the designs had to be created with multiple colors. Additionally, they’re not characters that are well known outside our home. They’re the dolls we have in bed that we hug in our sleep, namely: Talong (the eggplant), Biri (the strawberry), Cheffe (the chef-bread), Bani (the banana), Pattie (the chicken), and Tabby (the pink puffalump mouse).

My sister edited their eyes as hearts ♥♥ (to show being in love) and sent the pictures to Mrs. K via Viber. This is how the customized deco buns turned out:

OMG! Super cute!

Available fillings to choose from are: Pork Asado, Chicken Teriyaki, Beef Teriyaki, Choco Nutella, and Custard. Originally, we requested for five different fillings for the five characters and Choco Nutella for the sixth bun. Unfortunately, here’s what we just got instead:

Choco Nutella – Biri and Cheffe

Pork Asado – Bani and Tabby

Beef Teriyaki – Talong and Pattie

The reason why @mrs.ksdecopastries did not include every kind of filling we ordered was that she chose only the best selling fillings for us. Anyway, we let it pass this time. We can try the other fillings in our next order.

Mrs. K’s deco buns somehow pulled off as plump, Chinese-style steamed buns that are so tasty that you might forget your name for a minute. No additional sauce needed. After each bite, you will crave for another one immediately, so it’s a good thing that the buns’ sizes are not too small that you won’t be full.

The buns were soft and pillowy. Each was well crafted, with great flavors and a good time for your mouth. Everything was so delicate and perfect that I seriously couldn’t tell which one I liked the most.

These deco buns are great for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, snack—anytime! Yes, you would want to have a taste of it. And yes, you should order way ahead of time. Build up some courage and confidence to eat these cuties because you’re going to need them. 🙂

Price for Value: ★★★★☆

With Mrs. K’s deco pastries, the world can get a whole lot sweeter. The buns taste as good as they look and remind us of childhood feelings that are both nostalgic and hungry. Cost of each design ranges from PhP 75 to PhP 90. The buns we had were PhP 75 each. Overall, it’s a fair price to pay. With better service and faster response time, Mrs. K can dominate the “cupcakes” and “macarons” hyped scene and mark the beginning of a new era of buns coming back into style. 🙂

Always make your parents happy for they’re the only parents you have in this world. They’ve brought you up by the best they could muster just to provide you all your needs. Maintain that attitude of being thoughtful.

I would assume that Mrs. K is undermanned and just a small business that has a large demand to explain the delay. I think this is something they would be able to improve. Anyway, the customized homemade buns looks so cute and it does taste good too. I’m sure each bun is especially made. By the way which one is your doll.

Yup, I believe it’s just a small starting business. But with the high demand of their customized buns, I hope they increase their manpower to better serve their customers. And all of the dolls are mine and my sister’s. 🙂

Hmmmmm
I guess they should fix their way of accepting orders. The fact that they have a lot and it took some time for your inquiries to be answered, is a turn off. Changing the scheduled delivery date too, unless it was a valid excuse, and yes being late to that too adds to it.

I guess the good thing about it was that its affordable.

and as you said, they are sooo cute. and price for value is excellent.

My mom was actually almost scolding them on the phone with her very loud voice because of the delay. But all the anger and disappointment were quickly forgotten when the box was opened and the buns were revealed. We were mesmerized. Haha. But yeah, they should really improve their accessibility to the customers and manpower as they continue their business.

That’s a really amazing and personalized gift! It seems like there should be a better way to order, but I’m assuming that Mrs. K is just fine with how she does business. Maybe she gets enough business that she doesn’t need to take orders by phone? Seems weird, but whatever works for her! Glad it worked out for you, too, in the end though. 🙂

I think the reason why she only provides a limited communication means for now is because she just started her business and the manpower is still lacking to accept bulk orders. Nonetheless, since the business seems to be doing great, I hope they could improve their service and accessibility to the customers. 🙂

I love how honest you are in your review about this place. Especially at how long they took to respond to your text message you sent them. Good thing you’re on the ball and asking questions long before you needed answers to them. I think the buns they made are SO adorable!!!

Giving honest reviews is a way for them to know and think of plans on improving their services so I hope they also learn from this and the experience we had. On the other hand, the wait was still worth it because of the hardwork of Mrs. K that was proven from the result of her wonderful buns. 🙂

Our stoned hearts from waiting immediately melted after seeing the buns. We even felt bad as to how we kind of scolded them for being late because the buns were just too perfect that anyone would understand why they were late. Hard work and great effort were all exerted. 🙂

Delays suck, but looks like it was totally worth it! Those are stinkin cute. They look like they would be weird to eat, but I hope they taste better than what the inside looks like. But over all its really creative and I love that

I must say that courage is highly needed to actually eat those cutie buns. Haha My sister even wanted to keep them as a display but fortunately, they were very tasty and were full of fillings. Eating and enjoying their taste felt like the reward for having the courage to take a bite. 😛

We were afraid of eating them too because they’re just too cute and special for us. But after a bite, anyone would surely not be able to resist from eating the remaining whole bun. They truly taste so good.

Yup, I also just learned na isang tao lang ung gumagawa ng paos so considering that, they should really be applauded for the great job they did with the buns. Order ka na in advance and pay na rin para may sure slot ka na. 🙂

These buns are super adorable! I love how they can be customised to the soft toys you love, I would love to get one made of my sons favourite comforters. The inside looks so yummy too, I love the look of them!

It was just our wishful thinking at first to have the buns customized based on our dolls because all their other customers only order the famous character ones. Mrs. K surprisingly granted our wish and even exceeded our expectations with the tasty fillings.

Thanks! We were quite embarrassed to our parents because of the wait they had to suffer. But with the outcome of the buns even with the wait, we were still very satisfied with Mrs. K and our worries were immediately erased. 🙂

Creating homemade customized buns is really difficult especially when only one person is cooking/preparing them which is the case of Mrs. K. But I do hope they increase their manpower to entertain their customers better. 🙂

Congrats to your parents for reaching such a special milestone – Happy Anniversary to them! This is so interesting to me because I cannot imagine how a pastry the way it looks can accommodate both meat fillings and something like Nutella. I’m glad everything turned out good and was worth the wait. You presented a very honest and well-rounded review. What a special gift – and the eggplant is just too cute!

Thank you! The eggplant’s name is Talong. It’s the Tagalog for eggplant or it could also mean tall + long because he’s quite big for an eggplant doll. Haha.

The taste of the fillings wasn’t weird at all. They’re surprisingly very delicious and fitting to the buns. We weren’t even expecting them to taste that good because we thought they’d be more than perfect already considering their cuteness overload. 😛

Yup! Mrs. K is the first in the Philippines to offer such product and service of customizing buns. If they increase their manpower to cater to more orders then they’d definitely be ready to be out in the bigger market.

These look very interesting. I thought it was a candy/marshmallow dish at first since they are so colorful. It’s cool how versatile they are and you can use different meats and custards. I may try that one day.

Having these deco buns are really original and totally changes the usual white buns sold in restaurants. Even the fillings are unique like the Nutella and all the 4 flavors we tried didn’t taste weird at all which is great. 😛

Mrs. K does a great job in copying how the characters you ordered look in detail. Like with Stitch buns which she made for another customer, the bun’s ears also had a small cut to resemble the actual character which makes it more amazing.

Happy belated anniversary to your parents! That’s a very sweet and thoughtful gift for sure! I do agree that their services need to be taken up a notch (or two), a week for a response is insane… And the way they made you wait for such a long time for the delivery is also unacceptable IMO, thankfully they’re yummy enough to compensate the slightly horrible service haha

Thanks, Mindy! The delay was really unacceptable until we saw the buns and tasted them. We were sent to heaven after that. Haha. But they should still improve their service no matter how delicious and cute their buns are to complete the satisfaction of the customers and leave them a happy experience that would be more worthy to share to others. 🙂

For a while there I thought you were going to be stood up. This is one of the risks of buying through unregulated ecommerce. But I am glad you got what you paid for and were satisfied with the buns. I think Mrs. K’s product is very unique.

We also had that quick thought that we might have been fooled. But fortunately, Mrs. K kept us quite updated and answered some of our texts and calls while we were waiting for them to hand the box of buns.

Thanks, Karen! They can make any character bun design but it would be better to let them check the character you’d be ordering first to confirm if they can do it. And if they can, they’d then be able to give you a quotation. Hope you try their buns soon! 😀

Thank you! Wow, I applaud you for the courage you have to eat them. Haha. The thought of eating them made me very sad but I had no choice but to eventually taste them. But thankfully, they’re worthy to eat because they’re very delicious! 🙂

Well I didn’t make them so they’re surely cooked nicely and deliciously. But if I were to make them… Nah, I wouldn’t be able to make one. Haha I admit that cooking and baking are some of my greatest weaknesses. 😛

Ugh! This is just too hard for me to resist their cuteness and maybe, I would feel so guilty of eating them?! Haha! 😀

I would love to eat a customized bun with musical notes in it and a nutella filling that would ooze the bun! 😀

But on the other note, they should improve their service though. I really don’t like bad service as I can be so impatient especially if things can go horribly wrong but good thing you still had fun!

But what I don’t like is, they’re the ones who chose the fillings. Sure, they chose the best ones for you but it’s you who chose the fillings, why they can’t simply grant them? It’s called “Customized Character Buns” and it can’t be called as such if it’s still them who will choose the fillings. I think they should re-think on what customize is. 🙂

Haha we also felt guilty of eating them. You can actually send pictures of characters or designs you want to be customized as buns. Musical notes sound fine. 🙂 I am really looking forward to an improved service next time. Hope to try out the other flavors!

Wow these look fantastic! They almost look to pretty and cute to eat! I can’t believe that they are really food, it almost reminds me of plushes or clay figures. They are just that nice! It also looks really yummy!

If you’re planning to try Mrs. K’s customized character buns, order ahead of time for a sure slot because her deco buns are really in demand and she can’t accommodate too many orders at the same time. Only one person is making them by the way. 🙂

Wow! They have been married for 27 years! Congratulations, that’s fantastic. I am a big fan of buns, especially if they come in the shape of these lovely characters. I will definitely visit if I am ever in town. Thanks for sharing.

Food and Lifestyle Blogger in Manila

Roch Santos-Sioco is behind the blog Rochkirstin | com. Based in Manila, Philippines, she's a digital marketing strategist by day (and sometimes by night, let's get real) and a blogger with a large appetite for food & travel. She always aims to create content that's meaningful and enjoyable, whether it's a full-length blog post or a 140-character tweet.

When not blogging or eating, you can find her thinking about innovative technologies, planning out where to eat or travel next, or looking up on trends about health, pets, and wine. :)

Get in touch with her through rochkirstin@yahoo.com or view the About page to know more.

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